his head. His bow, unlike Ikhshid’s, was deep and flamboyant-Algarvians didn’t do things by halves. “Good day to you, your Excellency,” he said in his own language.
“And to you as well, your Excellency,” Hajjaj replied in the same tongue. He’d been fluent in Algarvian for a long time: back before the Six Years’ War (an era that seemed so distant and different, it might have been a thousand years ago), he’d spent his university days in Trapani, the Algarvian capital.
Balastro struck a pose. “Now, sir, you will see that Algarve stands by her allies in every way she can.”
“I shall be glad to see it, very glad indeed,” Hajjaj said.
That gave the Algarvian minister the chance to strike another pose, and he made the most of it, pointing to the sky and exclaiming, “Then look now at the dragons summoned to Zuwayza’s aid!”
Hajjaj looked. So did Ikhshid. So did the writers from a couple of Zuwayzi news sheets summoned to the outskirts of the capital for the occasion. Sure enough, half a wing of dragons-thirty-two in all-painted in Algarve’s gaudy green, red, and white spiraled down toward the dragon farm.
“They are indeed a pleasure to see, your Excellency,” Hajjaj said, bowing once more. “Bishah shall be safer because of them. After the last raid, when the Unkerlanters pounded us from the air almost as they pleased, dragons to fly against those in Swemmel’s rock-gray are most extremely welcome.”
“I can see how they would be,” Balastro agreed. “Till lately, Zuwayza has enjoyed all the advantages of the Derlavaian War, but only a few of the drawbacks: you won land from Swemmel, yet paid relatively little for it because he was more heavily involved against us.”
That was imperfectly diplomatic, no matter how much truth it held. Hajjaj felt obliged to reply, “Do remember, your Excellency, that Unkerlant attacked my kingdom a year and a half before yours went to war againstKingSwemmel.”
“Oh, no doubt,” Balastro said. “But ours is the bigger fight with Unkerlant, even reckoning in the relative sizes of your kingdom and mine.”
Another undiplomatic truth. When Hajjaj started to answer this time, a landing dragon’s screech drowned out his words. Normally, that would have annoyed him. At the moment, it gave him the excuse he needed to say to Balastro, “Walk aside with me, your Excellency, that we might confer together in something a little closer to privacy.”
Balastro bowed again. “With all my heart, sir. Nothing could please me more.” That might well not have been true, but it was diplomatic.
WhenGeneralIkhshid started to follow the two of them away from the other dignitaries and the writers and the folk concerned with the mundane needs of dragons, Hajjaj sent him a quick, hooded glance. He and Ikhshid had served Zuwayza side by side for many years. The veteran officer stopped after a step and a half and began fiddling with a sandal strap.
Had Hajjaj and Balastro sought privacy among Algarvians, everyone close by would have swarmed after them: the redheads were powerfully curious, and also powerfully convinced they had the absolute right to know everything that went on around them. Hajjaj’s countrymen showed more restraint. They could hardly show less restraint than most Algarvians, the Zuwayzi foreign minister thought.
“How now, your Excellency?” Balastro asked once he and Hajjaj had put a little distance between themselves and the other folk who’d come out to see the Algarvian dragons fly into the dragon farm.
“If you have a grievance with my kingdom, please come out with it,” Hajjaj replied. “Your little hints and gives do nothing but make me nervous.”
“All right, that’s fair enough; I will,” Balastro said. “Here’s the grievance, in a nutshell: you expect Algarve to make you a perfect ally and come to your aid whenever you need something from her, and yet you refuse to return the favor.”
“Zuwayza is a free and independent kingdom,” Hajjaj said stiffly. “You sometimes seem to forget that.”
“And you sometimes seem to remember it altogether too well,” Marquis Balastro said. “I tell you frankly, your Excellency, those Kaunian exiles you harbor have sneaked back to Forthweg and done us a good deal of harm there.”
“And I tell you frankly, I have trouble blaming them when I consider what you Algarvians have done to the Kaunians in Forthweg,” Hajjaj answered.
“When you consider what Kaunians have done to Algarve down through the centuries, you might well say they have it coming,” Balastro said.
Hajjaj shook his head. “No, your Excellency, I would never say that. Nor wouldKingShazli. I have made my views, and his, quite clear to you.”
“So you have,” Balastro agreed. “Now I am going to make something quite clear to you, and I am sure you will have no trouble making it quite clear to your king: if the Kaunians keep hurting us in Forthweg, they make it likelier that we lose the war against Unkerlant. If we lose the war against Unkerlant, you will also lose the war against Unkerlant. It is as simple as that. The more you want to deal withKingSwemmel afterwards, the more you should look the other way when the blonds climb into their boats and sail east to Forthweg.”
“We do not look the other way,” Hajjaj insisted. “Our navy is far from large, but we have turned back or sunk several of their boats.”
Balastro snorted. “Enough to show us a few: no more than that.”
The trouble was, he was right. Hajjaj’s sympathies, and those of his king, lay with the blonds who’d escaped from Algarvian occupation, and from the massacres the redheads inflicted on those blonds. As far as he was concerned, wars had no business being fought that way. Not even Swemmel of Unkerlant had fought that way till the Algarvians forced it on him. Waging war on the same side as the redheads made Hajjaj want to go sweat himself clean in the baths.
But when the choice was having Unkerlanters overrun Zuwayza…
Hajjaj shook his head. When he and Ikhshid were young, an Unkerlanter governor had ruled in Bishah. If the Algarvians lost, if Zuwayza lost, that could happen again. Algarve, however monstrous its warmaking, didn’t threaten Zuwayza’s freedom. Unkerlant did, and always would.
Bitterly, Hajjaj said, “I wish we were an island in the Great Northern Sea, so we would not have to make choices such as these.”
“Wish for the moon while you’re at it,” Balastro answered. “The world is as it is, not as you wish it were. But do you wonder that we hesitate to give you more help against Swemmel when we see how you repay us?”
“Knives have two edges,” Hajjaj said. “If you want to keep us in the fight against Unkerlant, we need the tools and the beasts to go on fighting. If we go out of the war, how much likelier is it that Algarve will lose?”
Balastro looked as if he’d bitten down hard on a lemon. Hajjaj had turned his argument around on him. At last, the Algarvian minister said, “The marriage in which we’re trapped may be loveless, but it is a marriage, and we’d both be hurt if we divorced. Whether we love you or not, your Excellency, we have sent you a present that costs us dear, for our own substance these days is not so large as we would wish, and we have, do believe me, no dragons to spare. We have nothing at all to spare.”
Hajjaj bowed. “Is it so bad as that?”
“It is bad, and it does not get better,” Balastro replied.
“That is not good news,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister said.
“Did I tell you it would be?” Balastro said. “Now, sir, you may not love us, but you are wed to us no less than we are wed to you. Even if you do not think us as fresh and lovely as you did when you first went to bed with us, will you not give us a present for a present, to keep us from quarreling and throwing dishes at each other after supper?”
With some amusement, Hajjaj said, “You sound like an old husband, sure enough. And what present would you have from us, as if I don’t know?”
Balastro nodded. “Aye, that one, sure enough. No gauds, no jewels-just do as you say you’ve been doing all along. I am not even asking that you give over harboring Kaunians here. If you will harbor them, you will. But, your Excellency, harbor themhere. If they want to go back to Forthweg, stop turning a blind eye to them. Youcan stop them, and I hope you will not do me the discourtesy of claiming otherwise.”
“I shall take your words toKingShazli,” Hajjaj said. Hating himself, hating what the war made him do for the sake of his kingdom, he added, “I shall take them to him with the recommendation that he follow your suggestion.”
Balastro bowed. “I can ask no more.” When Hajjaj recommended something to the king, whatever it was had
